BRISBANE CITY FC
Sure was not an easy decision to take, but the plain situation of that period of my life led me to make some changes.
I have played for nine years in the Atalanta academy followed by 3 years of disastrous serie D, my football career didn’t seem to be the brightest one and so was my job, do some maintenance in a grey big shopping mall, surely wasn’t my type and so I started planning a different life, somewhere else, a new country where I could have get something more than what I had.
I have sent hundreds of emails to football clubs all over the world and only this Australian low division club from a suburb of Brisbane reply to me and convinced to move there as they could have provide accommodation for players.
The club, Wolves fc, play in the BPL (Brisbane Premier League), I remember being very impressed by the first match I went to see, an extremely fast and physical game. I started training while I was waiting for the international clearance to arrive, a very annoying process that involve the new club to contact the federation of its country, the federation of this country to contact the federation of the country of the previous club, this federation to contact the old club and the papers has to go back from the same but opposite way; it is something that can take few minutes as everything is through email but for some reason it always take about a month.
I have played few games with the club and wasn’t really satisfied with the quality of training, commitment from player and politics from the coach, on top of that, a rent I didn’t expect to pay and for some reason i was not allowed to take a shower after training. I had to move out from there, and the luck wanted that the American guy I was sharing the flat with invited me to play a 5v5 game with friends, turned out that a player
was the son of the president of the Brisbane city fc, a club from the NPL national premier league, I became friend with him as his family was italian and secretly I went for a tryout with this club.
Signing for this new club meant to move out from the house and looking for an accommodation by myself, something I have never done before, I wasn’t really happy to move in a hostel, so I end up living for few days at Pope Alice house, an artist I met at a conference about Rael, this man, the most extravagant person I have ever met in my life. After that I finally took courage to move in the stinky cheapest hostel of Brisbane, the Cloud 9, where i have actually found good friends and enjoyed my staying.
I played 2 season for Brisbane city fc and I loved it, the Queensland NPL is a great semi-professional league, a bit hard to get involved if you are a foreigner as there is a maximum of 2 visa player per team in the roster, QNPL includes clubs from all over the north east coast of Australia, 12 teams playing to each other twice with no relegation or promotion system, nice facilities and nice grass pitches, I would have definitely keep playing for them but my working holiday visa allowed me to stay only for two years and the club couldn’t provide visa for the players. Moneywise the QNPL is not bad, considering is only 2-3 training per week in the evening allowing player to have a full time job beside football; the salary can vary from 300 to 500 dollar per week which is good but nothing compared to the Sydney or Melbourne based clubs, where they can get up to 1000 dollar weekly.
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Written by Luca Perico.
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